Trees, Clouds, and the Unsettling Truth about Climate Science
In a recent revelation from the international CLOUD project at the nuclear research center CERN, researchers have identified sesquiterpenes—gaseous hydrocarbons released by plants—as a pivotal factor in cloud formation. This study, published in the journal Science Advances, might just be the wrench in the works for those who have long touted the notion of “settled” climate science.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been confidently projecting that the global climate will warm by 1.5 to 4.4 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100. Yet, these projections are riddled with uncertainties. For instance, in a worst-case scenario, the temperature could swing anywhere between 3.3 to 5.7 degrees Celsius. Such a vast range hardly inspires confidence.
The root of these uncertainties? A glaring lack of understanding of the intricate processes occurring in our atmosphere. The CLOUD project, in its quest to demystify these processes, has been delving deep into the enigma of cloud formation.
Clouds, as it turns out, are not just fluffy white entities in the sky. Their formation and behavior have profound implications for the planet’s temperature. While it’s known that clouds reflect solar radiation, cooling the earth’s surface, the exact mechanics of their formation remain elusive.
Aerosols, both natural and man-made, provide the condensation nuclei essential for cloud formation. However, a significant portion of these nuclei form in the air when gaseous molecules combine, turning into solids—a process known as “nucleation” or “new particle formation” (NPF).
While the role of anthropogenic gases like sulfur dioxide is somewhat-documented, the study has shed light on the underestimated influence of natural gases like sesquiterpenes. Despite being less prevalent than other substances, sesquiterpenes have a disproportionately large impact on cloud formation. In fact, they form ten times more particles than other organic substances at equivalent concentrations.
This study’s findings underscore the need to reconsider the role of sesquiterpenes in climate models, potentially rendering many existing models obsolete.
Conclusion:
For those who’ve been echoing the mantra that climate science is “settled” and beyond dispute, this study serves as a stark reminder of the complexities and unknowns still at play. It’s high time to question the wisdom of pouring vast sums of money into policies based on potentially flawed models. The discovery of sesquiterpenes’ role in cloud formation is a testament to the ever-evolving nature of climate science—a field that is far from settled.
Source: How trees influence cloud formation (2023, September 8).
Duh
Yup.
“In a recent revelation from the international CLOUD project at the nuclear research center CERN, researchers have identified sesquiterpenes—gaseous hydrocarbons released by plants—as a pivotal factor in cloud formation.”
I have more than once speculated here that coniferous trees emit such large amounts of isoprene and terpenes into the atmosphere for other reasons than making pine forests smell nice.
Excellent absorbers of not just IR, but also UV in the same range of ozone. A great idea for producing photo-ionization leading to nucleation centers for water condensation and thus cloud formation.
As you say, Duh.
Yup. The Great Smokey Mountains are ‘Smokey’ (foggy) in summer because of isoprenes and terpenes released by the trees. A piney forest smelled piney because of isoprenes. That has been known for decades. CERN discovering that climate models do not account for this is interesting, but minor compared to other BIG climate model deficiencies.
And the Blue Mountains in Australia are “blue” due to the emission of eucalyptus oil into the air.
“This study’s findings underscore the need to reconsider the role of sesquiterpenes in climate models, potentially rendering many existing models obsolete.”
Climate science will just say they already include the effects in their parameterizations!
John von Neuman, the great mathematician, once said “With 4 parameters I can model an elephant. With 5 parameters I can make it wiggle its tail.” the climate models have tens of millions of parameters. With that many parameters, they can make it do anything.
…they can make it do anything but accurately predict the future.
Trunk, not tail. But otherwise correct.
John von Neumann also told his friend, Claude E. Shannon, to name his new information theory quantity “entropy.” It has cause an enormous amount of confusion since, as many think shuffled cards and messy rooms are examples of increased entropy.
In the late 1890s leading physicists such as Lord Rayleigh declared that there was no further progress to made in physics the science was settled. Then in 1900 came Plank’s black body radiation law to solve the ultraviolet catastrophe highlighted in the Rayleigh Jeans law of classical physics. Planck’s quanta of energy revolutionized physics the science was anything but settled.
“”potentially flawed models””
I would argue they are hopelessly flawed.
You beat me to it strativarius. It’s one of the great mysteries of our time – why so many are trusting (in your accurate words) “hopelessly flawed” climate models that are projecting temperature and sea level 50 or 100 years out. While this study sounds interesting, the uselessness of the models was already “settled” climate science in my view.
These models they rely on have been fine tuned to give appropriately alarming results
The key is squeezing out any dissenting voices and papers etc
Money!!!
Potentially flawed
You beat me to it. Why do we have to be so kind commenting on deadly BS from those bent on a pernicious course to reducing population by billions and controlling every move of those who they keep locked down. By all means, keep the debate as civilized as possible, but even the modelers have come out querying why the models run so hot!
Probably the minions have layered over and disappeared Gavin Schmidt’s candid statement of only a year or two: “Models are running a way too hot and we don’t know why.”
Gavin’s problem is that HE does not know why, while many skeptics do. There are three biggies:
Separate comment about 2&3, previously provided several times in comments. INM CM5 has an ECS of 1.8. Plug the cloud and WVF corrections into Lindzen’s Bode feedback curve (zero feedbacks = ECS 1.2C) yields an IPCC adjusted ECS of 1.8. Nice triangulation.
“PCC says models show cloud feedback is something significantly positive. Observations show it is zero or slightly negative.”
Positive feedback from water vapor is an essential part of the human-caused climate change theory. According to this theory, CO2 alone cannot raise the temperatures much without the help of a positive water vapor feedback.
But, as noted above, observations do not show a positive water vapor feedback, even after all these years. Therefore, the human-caused, CO2-derived, climate change theory is wrong.
Not just potentially flawed, but obviously flawed.
“Hopelessly” they would be, if the intention had ever been honest modeling of reality.
These models are intentionally flawed to produce screemingly alarming results.
Sesquiterpenes are one of the CARB’s evil VOCs, volatile organic compounds, that they “regulate” to “prevent ozone”. The levels of VOCs in the Los Angeles Air Basin exceed standards purely from natural sources. (If you can smell sagebrush or eucalyptus, it is emitting VOCs).
I seem to recall my older brother telling my dad that the strange odor in the car was from oregano or sagebrush.
I tried that one, too, Scissor! My dad thought it was onions!
I benefited from an older sister and brother that exhausted my dad and took away much of the fight in him. I learned that laying low was the way to go.
CARB is the California Air Resources Board not to be confused with the South Coast Air Quality Management District.
“question the wisdom of pouring vast sums of money into policies”
Should read: “question the wisdom of pouring vast sums of OUR money into THEIR pockets.”
I see there is a new scam in town. Having failed dismally with pandemics, aliens, climate catastrophe and famine the new WEF talking point is water security.
My pitchfork futures are doing nicely, thank you.
So was there a shortage of turpenes, therefore nucleation sites, therefore cloud cover, before the boreal forests existed, when the north was covered with a mile of ice ? Resulting in more sunshine ? Well NO. Turpenes are just one of many potential nucleators, the most numerous being ice crystals themselves falling from higher altitudes where water droplets might have hit temperatures below freezing before they formed and fell. Falling Ice crystals finally warming up to the freezing point due to atmospheric Lapse rate is why those fluffy clouds are flat on the bottom…
DMacKenzie, thanks for my daily enlightenment on flat bottom clouds. I never knew this.
Flat bottom clouds
You make the rockin’ world go ’round
Flat bottomed clouds, you make the rockin’ world go round!
What kind of minds think like this, Richard? 😝
Boomers, it’s our music!
No doubt there are more turpenes in the air over the last few decades, considering that the CO2-greening of the earth and oceans has increased by about 14 percent, according to NASA.
There is much more cloud formation over our vast oceans where there are no trees. Clouds form when atmospheric water vapor condenses. That water vapor comes from the evaporation of surface water. The temperature at the interface is near the dew point of the atmosphere just above it. Water vapor is lighter than air and rises. The air with water vapor cools as it rises. When it reaches the dew point, the water condenses forming clouds.
The main oceanic CCN VOC is dimethyl sulfide (DMS), which is not a turpene.
There is no shortage of condensation starters.
DMS is one of my favorite molecules. It’s taste and fragrance are important to beer, ripe olives, baking bread, corn fritters, etc. Carbonyl sulfide, OCS, is gaining in interest as far as oceanic and atmospheric scientists are concerned.
True but the water condenses around something in the atmosphere; particulates, etc.
You don’t need many nucleation points. At around -48 C H2O becomes an ice particle whether or not nucleation points exist. Thats below the tropopause. Then it can fall to lower altitudes and become a nucleation point itself for more water vapor condensation.
It’s known that frontal-like cloud formations will occur mid-ocean with no front or associated weather cause. To model this effect, some models add mountain ranges where, obviously, there are none.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
The vast majority of the models used by the IPCC have not been fit for purpose from their inception.
Any statistical model that tries to include more than four or five variables is useless for either prediction or attribution. Too many sources of error.
Especially when they simply don’t know what many of the processes are and simply make them up as ‘forcings.’
Especially when they are dependent variables whose actual function is unknown or conjectured. They are what’s known as WAGs.
And then they average the WAGs.
What do you get when you average a bunch of wild @#$ guesses? Answer: More garbage alarmist climate science.
“Settled” indicates it is beyond questioning. Nothing in science is ever settled.
“In science the best available explanation is accepted only until a better one comes along.”
In [post-modern] science the ‘theory’ of anthropogenic global warming is not only accepted, it is holy scripture – the word of Gaia
Ironically, James Lovelock was not particularly religious but he definitely acquired a somewhat religious following.
In todays post-truth science the theory is king, data only supports it with dissenting data completely discarded. Naomi Oreskes has been a fervent supporter of this idea of ‘science’ rather than empirical science.
Like a dog!?
Actually, Lovelock’s ‘Gaia Hypothesis’ proposes that Earth’s temperature is homeostatically self-regulating, i.e. thermostatically controlled, in which case any excessive (by Gaia’s intrinsic criteria) anthropogenic global warming is doomed to nullification in time as Gaia’s thermo-regulatory processes (i.e. negative feedbacks of one sort and another) get activated and swing into effect.
However, no modern-day [post-modern] ‘Gaia-worshippers’ appear to know anything about that as far as I can tell.
So what would you think plants need to make sesquiterpenes? My bet is that the dreaded so called “greenhouse gas” CO2 would be high on the list. 🙂
Come on, Charles! Your conclusion is SO out of line; look at how much the whole world benefited from the modeling for the plandemic! Those billionaires really needed help distancing themselves from the hoi polloi, and you know it!
The Neil Ferguson award for modelling accuracy is up for grabs
Coding sesquiterpenes into climate models is a daft idea. It would be like coding in the movement of butterflies in the Amazon – the ones that feature in chaos theory. As currently structured, the models can never work no matter what you code into them because they work with the micro. They need to drop the micro and work with the macro.
No, they don’t. Their clouds are 100km square, and I know for a fact cloud formation is a microscopic process.
Many people here have shared stories about how the actual climate, not weather, climate, can change withing a few miles, across a river or over a small hill.
I say their models are too macro, and they should come out mommy’s basement and look at life in closer detail.
Clio, they can’t. The CFL constraint means that modeling on physically meaningful scales (convection cells are 2-4km across) is computationally intractable by about 6-7 orders of magnitude. Hence they are parameterized. The parameters are tuned to best hindcast. That drags in the natural variation attribution problem. Models assume it away, so forecast too hot by about 2x. A feature, not a bug.
The original science paper, “How Trees Influence Cloud Formation”.
“this study serves as a stark reminder of the complexities and unknowns still at play”
I’m not sure what that paper’s conclusion is regarding trees. They influence cloud formation? OK, so then what? Is that good or bad? (assuming there is actually a problem which I don’t believe).
Good. There isn’t a problem, they are just identifying and explaining a natural process.
It means that trees contribute to a feedback loop. They need water to obtain nutrients and engage in photosynthesis. Transpiring water and giving off turpenes encourages the water to condense and precipitate, thus providing a replacement for the water they need to survive and grow.
While and whereas the subject of cloud formation interests me to an embarrassing degree, I just could not read past “pivotal cause”. Well, I did, with long teeth, hoping for something useful.
Competing theory: the conditions leading to cloud formation, are conducive for them sexy quitter things to rise high enough to become, opportunistically/accidentally, caught up in the cloud vapour.
Cause and effect; a totally useless approach when dealing with Strange Attractors.
There’s no heatwave. But there’s no let-up in the alarm
“”Autumn heat continues in Europe “” – Grauniad
‘Heat’ is a very strong amplification of the actual conditions. Alarmist rhetoric yet again.
I shall add “sesquiterpenes pollution” to my nightlymares.
Trivia. Minutia, Garbage, Nonsense, WhereHaveThesePeopleBeen, WhatSortOfSheleteredLivesDoTheyLead
see the attached.
IOW: Every woman certainly on this planet, many men, will have in their possession at least one little container/bottle/canister/dispenser or what-have-you containing these things
They will be and are in every bottle of perfume and Eau de Toilette and in everything else around at all times that (possibly) ‘smell nice’
I do like the bit about ‘grounding and balance of emotions’
Holy cow, if anyone needs to take a long bath full of these things, it’s every climate scientist on this Earth
** because they and their shit ‘science’ stinks
Story tip:
https://www.theweathernetwork.com/en/news/nature/animals/at-canadas-largest-atlantic-puffin-colony-chicks-are-dying-of-starvation
Sorry for the off-topic segue, but the article is another example of journalists and scientists straining to find some climate warming angle in any issue – and by doing so I think they hard “Science” since these intellectually lazy people aren’t looking for real details and causes.
With the puffins – they are generally doing great, but a bunch of ‘pufflings’ show up small and malnourished near a town and suddenly the scientists have blamed warmer oceans because the parents would have to swim deeper to get fish that would need to swim lower to stay out of the heat.
Big face-palm – so many things wrong with that propaganda – it’s definitely not a proper theory – considering that if the water is even warming off the coast of Newfoundland, some fraction of a degree isn’t going to make the fish swim any lower.
So while these climate fanatics hog the limelight, the focus if off finding the real culprit if there even is one, given that the puffin colony in general is doing very well.
Sounds like Ronald Reagan was at least partly right about trees and VOC’s.
It’s worth pointing out the Jasper Kirkby was forbidden to publish his earlier results from CLOUD which were much more controversial for the climate science community. They offered a degree of support for the Svensmark hypothesis about cloud nucleation being influenced by high energy cosmic particles. Surely not a surprise to anyone who understands Wilson cloud Chambers, so long used to track particles in experiments.
“… potentially rendering many existing models obsolete.”
When were the UN IPCC CliSciFi climate models ever fit for purpose?
They’ve been very close to observations so far. The multi-model mean (MMM) of the decades-old CMIP3 are doing extremely well with regard to surface temperatures. The newer version MMMs are also well within the projected range. As with CMIP3, these will improve as time irons out the natural variability assumptions built into the models.
First, models are being compared to UHI contaminated surface datasets; compare tropospheric temperature trends. Second, the forcings in the models are less than those actually experienced. You smeared the lipstick on that pig.
It promises to be an interesting autumn in North America.
In what way?
Strong ripples of the jet current in the tropopause can be seen. Highs in the north will cause an influx of cold air from the north, where there is less and less solar radiation.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/500hPa/orthographic=-102.30,29.35,264/loc=-115.294,40.611
There is a dip in the jet stream (marked) which will bring down cooler air from Canada into the Western U.S.
The rest of the U.S. is currently south of the jet stream which means warm temperatures for most of the U.S. until the jet stream configuration changes.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2023/10/03/0600Z/wind/isobaric/500hPa/orthographic=-108.21,61.17,460
This is just more of the same nonsense. The formation of clouds over oceans regulate energy uptake and loss. Their formation is inevitable and a function of the surface temperature. The notion that chemical nucleation is required is silly. And trees only cover a small portion of Earth’s surface.
You do not need to observe clouds over water for very long to understand their formation is a function of the surface temperature. From surface fog at low temperature to fluffy puffs around 15C and on to angry cumulonimbus at the maximum sustainable of 30C
It’s been known for quite some time that tropical rain forests make their own rain. Cut down the trees, and the rain essentially stops.
The only people I see claiming that scientist are saying “climate science is settled” are self-proclaimed ‘skeptics’; those trying to say “if something about any given subject is not fully understood, then nothing about it can be understood”.
It does not follow that just because not everything is known about any given subject then nothing can be known about it, ever. That’s just silly. Like saying that because you have not completed a 3,000 piece jig-saw puzzle means that all the parts you have completed to date must be wrong. And some will be, but the picture improves with every piece.
You never see climate scientists claiming that their work is “settled”. You only see fake skeptics saying that climate scientists say “the science is settled”. If climate scientists thought the science was “settled” they’d be out of work, right? So the last people who’d want the science to be ‘settled’ are those engaged in it.
Or those ideologically opposed to it, such as we see here at WUWT in great (if diminishing) number.
Who mainly says the science is settled are the politicians and the media.
Who are just regurgitating what the “climate scientists” have told them.
You shouldn’t feed the troll. A few minutes on the web would inform Nail that his assertion is wrong.
Oh, malarky! The entire argument of “consensus” being used against skeptics is based on the science being settled. And that “consensus” argument *is* used by climate science and scientists.
Climate scientists and the Roman Catholic church of Galileo’s time bear a striking resemblance.
“You only see fake skeptics saying that climate scientists say “the science is settled””
BBC = fake sceptics?
JSO = fake sceptics?
Just two of a host of ultra far left woke AWG/CC cultists who have stated this – I am certain others could be recalled here..
Also great news for anyone who does cloud seeding to know what chemicals work best.
Less common in rich countries, sometimes used in China.
Closer to climate change space, emit this instead of sulfur for cloud brightening and you get to skip one of the arguments about air pollution.
Land use change is one of the only ways that man can significantly influence the climate. This is usually on a local or regional level, but wide spread land use change can affect entire continents.
I would hope that they don’t latch onto this though, or the authoritarians will use fear based propaganda to get populations to demand that everyone is locked in a few densely populated and tightly controlled cities.
Effective mitigation of such land use change effects should be able to be mitigated quite easily by strategic planting of trees.
Urbanization is not the biggest land use change. The biggest land use change is converting wild ecosystems into agricultural land.
El Niño is weakening.
http://www.bom.gov.au/archive/oceanography/ocean_anals/IDYOC007/IDYOC007.202310.gif
Looks like Greenpeace should have stuck to saving trees after all. Tree huggers unite!
“Ronald Reagan’s much maligned assertion in 1981 that: “Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do,” may have more truth to it than most folks imagined.”
They should have listen to him.
This reminds me of a line from a book by Art Linkletter, of radio’s “Kids Say the Darndest Things” fame. The book, “Kids Sure Write Funny” was a compilation of things teachers had sent him over the years. The quote: “Water vapor gets together in a cloud. When it gets big enough to be called a drop it does.”